June 24, 2010 - Coast Salish Territories, Victoria –Victoria’s Other Urban Repair Squad (O.U.R.S) has painted more “sharrows” along a busy commuter route in Victoria. The markings run along a street linking downtown and Camosun and University of Victoria campuses.

"It's been nearly a year since we painted the sharrows on Hillside and there's been no action at all from the CRD in terms of providing more bike lanes," says Yukon Duit, spokesperson for the group. The Hillside sharrows were subsequently painted over by City workers last July.

Sharrows – short for “Shared Use Arrow” – are bicycle-and-chevron markings indicating a shared use lane. The markings are used in cities across North America and Europe on roadways that are too narrow to incorporate a full bike lane.

Sharrows were adopted last year by the Transportation Association of Canada, which approves standards and guidelines for road design and markings across Canada. The markings have not been officially adopted by any of the municipalities in the CRD, although they are used to designate major bike routes in many other cities in Canada - most notably in Montreal and Vancouver.

"It’s clear that despite touting Victoria as the cycling capital of Canada, the CRD and the City do not see cycling infrastructure as a priority,” states Duit. “None of the City of Victoria’s $189-million 2010 budget has been allocated to the Sustainability Department, yet nearly $69-million will be spent repairing major vehicular roadways into the city and $3-million will be spent on automobile parkades.”

The City of Victoria 2009-2028 Capital Plan Project Budget allocates $2-million for a bike lane along Yates from Government to Wharf. Duit, however, says that the funds are misdirected.

“That’s a lot of money to spend on one block – and a lane on a downtown commercial block does not do much to support commuter cycling,” notes Duit. Alternatively, bike lanes along the Hillside-Lansdowne corridor would encourage cycling among the University of Victoria and Camosun College communities which see over 34,000 students and 5,000 faculty and staff accessing the campuses during the school year. Studies have shown that the biggest barrier to getting more people on bicycles is the perception of danger on the road due to inadequate cycling infrastructure.

"We know from our experience that painting bike lanes is cheap. You can buy a lot of paint with $2-million, so we thought we'd show the CRD how it's done. Again," says Duit. “For its part, the City is making decisions in the dark, without the input of the cycling community, and at a snail’s pace” claims Duit, pointing to the shutting down of the City of Victoria Cycling Advisory Committee nearly two years ago.

O.U.R.S Victoria is part of a larger international network of Urban Repair Squads across North America, Europe and South America that encourages people to reclaim ownership and stewardship of urban spaces by constructing urban infrastructure through direct action.
-30-

For more information:
To receive more info on the whereabouts of the new sharrows or to see photos email: oursvictoria@graffiti.net

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Lots of people gathered on that peculiar Saturday afternoon (may 29) with the motto « draw yourself the bike lane you always asked for ». Indeed, bikers associations have been asking for real bike-lane planning in Lyon for years without being even heard. The existing bike lanes are ageing (pictograms disappearing...), mysteriously stop at dangerous crossroads, do not cross over bridges (there are many in Lyon), are not connected etc.

Despite, the major is boasting about “Lyon being a great biking city”.
Obviously, he has never tried biking around... This symbolic action was an attempt to draw everybody's attention and to show it is possible (and quite easy !) to create bike lanes. If we can do it, the city can surely do so...

The action was repeated the following Saturday to create bike lanes against the traffic in one-way streets in Lyon city centre. The city centre is a 30 km/h speed limit zone and all one-way streets should be opened to two-way traffic for bikes (as allowed by regulation). But once again, the municipality does not seem ready to move on. The action demonstrated the feasibility of such an urban
development... Let's hope it will inspire our city council !Links:http://velorutionlyon.free.fr/article.php3?id_article=292http://velorutionlyon.free.fr/article.php3?id_article=294